U.N. Tells Afghan Factions to End Fighting, Human Rights Abuses

In a unanimous resolution issued last Friday, members of the United National Security Council ordered all Afghan factions to cease fighting, "cooperate with the aim of creating a broad-based and fully-representative government" and resume negotiations "without delay and preconditions." The resolution also condemned the Taliban's mass abuse of "large groups of the population and other forms of mass persecution," including the repression of girls and women.

The resolution was initiated by the Russian government, a long-time supporter of anti-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan. Afghanistan's northern border neighbors the southern border of the Commonwealth of Independent States, once part of the Soviet Union.

The governments of India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan, which do not have representatives in the Council, also issued their support for the resolution.

3/25/2015 Afghan Woman Beaten to Death for Burning Koran - A 27-year-old woman ‎who reportedly burned a copy of the Koran inside of a riverside shrine in Kabul, Afghanistan was brutally beaten and burned alive on Thursday.
Shocking videos quickly spread on social media showing crowds of men surrounded by hundreds of onlookers assaulting the 27-year-old Farkhunda with bricks and sticks and repeatedly kicking her. . . .